Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

confusion, waiting for the poor souls of the maimed
and hurt soldiery, receive unawares some strokes with
swords, and so by those means suffer a solution of
and division in the continuity of their aerial and
invisible substances; as if some lackey, snatching
at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast meat
on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good
rap on the knuckles with a cudgel. They cry
out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when he
was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as
Homer testifieth of him, did then raise his voice
more horrifically loud and sonoriferously high than
ten thousand men together would have been able to do.
What maketh all this for our present purpose?
I have been speaking here of well-furbished armour
and bright shining swords. But so is it not,
Friar John, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance
of work, cessation from labour, desisting from making
it officiate, and putting it into that practice wherein
it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for
want of occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more
rusty than the key-hole of an old powdering-tub.
Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these
two things: either furbish your weapon bravely,
and as it ought to be, or otherwise have a care that,
in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume to
return to the house of Raminagrobis. For my part,
I vow I will not go thither. The devil take
me if I go.

Chapter 3.XXIV.

How Panurge consulteth with Epistemon.

Having left the town of Villomere, as they were upon
their return towards Pantagruel, Panurge, in addressing
his discourse to Epistemon, spoke thus: My most
ancient friend and gossip, thou seest the perplexity
of my thoughts, and knowest many remedies for the
removal thereof; art thou not able to help and succour
me? Epistemon, thereupon taking the speech in
hand, represented unto Panurge how the open voice and
common fame of the whole country did run upon no other
discourse but the derision and mockery of his new
disguise; wherefore his counsel unto him was that he
would in the first place be pleased to make use of
a little hellebore for the purging of his brain of
that peccant humour which, through that extravagant
and fantastic mummery of his, had furnished the people
with a too just occasion of flouting and gibing, jeering
and scoffing him, and that next he would resume his
ordinary fashion of accoutrement, and go apparelled
as he was wont to do. I am, quoth Panurge, my
dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind and resolution to
marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be
unfortunate in my wedlock. For this cause have
I made a vow to young St. Francis—­who at
Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,
earnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion,
for he was the first founder of the confraternity
of good men, whom they naturally covet, affect, and
long for—­to wear spectacles in my cap, and
to carry no codpiece in my breeches, until the present
inquietude and perturbation of my spirits be fully
settled.